Hi all, I guess it's my turn for an introduction. I'm Karen and yes, I too
am both female and a Wikipedian. I leave near New York City and am active in
the Wikimedia NYC chapter, where I sometimes refer to myself as the token
female (though I'm not actually, but sometimes it feels like it). I've been
worrying for a good while now about what exactly keeps women turned off from
Wikipedia, and I think there's a couple of factors. To quote from a post I
made on another website about this topic:
*The gender gap on Wikipedia is one of my pet peeves. It's real, it's
undeniable, and it's only partially in our control, I think. Wikipedia can
be a fighty place, no doubt. To stick around there can require you to be
willing to do the virtual equivalent of stomping on someone's foot when they
get in your face, which a lot of women, myself included, find difficult.
Even more important to this issue, I think, though, is that it can require
you to judge your own competence and decide it's high. If I might draw gross
generalization here for a moment, imagine the following scenario:
You're wandering around Wikipedia, and you come across the Friendship
Bracelet article. Shock! You actually know a lot about friendship bracelets,
and you can fill in a lot of the obvious gaps in the article with what you
know! Do you:
a) Fill in those gaps. This isn't controversial information, after all!
b) Think about it, then decide that probably if it were that easy, someone
else would already have done it, and therefore you are likely to be missing
something about how this whole thing works
Did you pick option A? You're a bit more likely to be male. B? Odds are on
the side of you being female. No, this isn't across the board. I know plenty
of people who cross those categories. But my sense is that this slight
tendency of women to doubt their competence, coupled with the undeniable
gatekeeping problem of experienced Wikipedians reverting just that sort of
shouldn't-be-controversial-but-they-put-it-on-MY-article! edit, adds up to a
repulsion factor.
Women I know on Wikipedia often fall into one of two groups: those who will
take you on, any time any place; and those who grind away in
behind-the-scenes areas, copyediting articles, populating maps, cleaning up
licensing rationales, and doing other largely-uncontroversial things. There
seem to be more men who cover that middle ground, the ground where there's
no fear of doing something noticeable but also no fear of talking back to
someone if necessary.
Again, I hasten to point out that this isn't true of everyone, by far. But
as Kat Walsh wrote in an essay on the topic, it seems like it's less that
Wikipedia isn't welcoming specifically to women and more that active,
full-spectrum Wikipedianism is fitted best by certain personality types, and
for some reason there seem to be more men who slot neatly into that type
than women.*
Those are my logical thoughts, but those of you who know me might remember
that there is one, more illogical, thing that gets under my skin more than
almost anything else: Wikipe-tan and her short skirt and thigh-high
stockings. Why, WHY is it ok that we even joke about that being our
"mascot"? An overtly sexualized, large-breasted woman who people regularly
draw in bikinis and maid costumes? I mean, I know Wikipe-tan is not actually
The Problem. But she's the most egregious example I think we have of the
sort of unconscious "boyzone" culture that permeates a lot of collaborative
sites these days. It doesn't even occur to a lot of men that that could be
off-putting. They certainly don't mean it to be off-putting. And they're a
little wounded when someone points out that, well, it *is*.
Ok, I've ranted enough for now. I cede the floor.
-Karen
User:Fluffernutter